Five years ago, I wrote several articles about a horrific massacre of Iraqi civilians
in Ishaqi. Credible evidence and eyewitness testimony indicated that
American soldiers, in the course of a raid, had executed unarmed
civilians -- including several small children -- then called in an
airstrike to destroy the house, and the evidence of these murders.

At
the time, these articles were criticized by some for putting the "worst
case" construction on the evidence. After all, in the "fog of war" --
that clapped-out rhetorical trope which has hidden a multitude of sins
down through the years -- who could know what really happened? Yeah,
some mistakes might or might not have been made -- crossfire, collateral
damage, etc. -- but surely no one could believe that American soldiers
would deliberately do such a thing. My take -- and that of this blog's
co-founder, Rich Kastelein, who put together a devastating flash film on the incident -- was just the usual overblown, knee-jerk, anti-war hissy fit, etc.

But thanks to a recent WikiLeaks revelation,
we now know that at least two other groups of knee-jerk, anti-war
freaks were also pursuing the "worst-case" interpretation of the
massacre: UN investigators, who delivered a detailed report on the
evidence to the American occupation forces -- and the invaders
themselves. It turns out that American authorities regarded the UN
evidence very seriously; so seriously that they took immediate, decisive
action .... to cover it all up.

Publicly, of course, the
invaders had solemnly promised to investigate the "allegations" with all
due speed and diligence; this promise was, of course, an outright lie
-- as has been the case countless times with similar "allegations" in
America's decade-long war on the world. The atrocity was never
investigated by the Americans, who simply tossed aside not only the work
of the UN investigators, but also the mountain of first-hand evidence gathered by the US-trained, pro-American Iraqi officials on the scene.

So
here we are: we now know that the Americans themselves strongly
suspected that the "allegations" were true, that U.S. soldiers had
entered a house in an Iraqi village and executed five children under the
age of five -- including a five-month old -- and four women, including a
grandmother, and the children's father, a young man in this 20s. They
had credible evidence for this, they took the evidence seriously -- and
they bent all their efforts toward burying the case and protecting the
perpetrators (and their commanders). They have sat on this evidence for
five years, beyond the end of the Bush Regime and deep into the reign of
the Nobel Peace Laureate.

This would be the same Nobel Peace
Laureate whose forces, along with their local proxies, carried out yet
another mass killing of civilians in Ishaqi last month, as we noted here.
Barack Obama has never repudiated the War Machine that routinely
produces such atrocities; on the contrary, he has embraced it, praised
it, identified himself with it at every opportunity. He has never
repudiated the criminal occupation of Iraq, but has instead sought
frantically, for months, to extend it, in any way possible, with tens of
thousands of "advisers," "trainers," and mercenaries disguised as
"State Department security personnel." Along with his favorite general
-- now his spymaster -- David Petraeus, he has intensified the
Ishaqi-style "home invasion" system in the other war of domination and
profiteering that he has not only embraced but boldly escalated, in
Afghanistan. He has taken deadly home invasions to new heights --
literally -- with his cowardly drone missile campaign against homes and
neighborhoods in undefended villages in Pakistan. And in Yemen. And in
Somalia. (And in who knows what other countries in the secret wars and
covert ops that his security apparatchiks boast of conducting all over
the world?)

Yet it is this figure -- this xerox copy of the
despised Dubya -- whom all good liberals and progressives are being
urged to support. His election is far more important than the mounds of
dead children piling up under his command. His personal political
fortunes are far more important than the national bankruptcy engineered
by the War Machine he proudly leads and the Money Power he faithfully
serves -- a bankruptcy that has opened the door to the destruction of
programs, hopes and ideals that liberals and progressives have nurtured
for generations. His electoral fate is more important than the
generations of hate, extremism, violence and instability being bred by
his policies. Indeed, Barack Obama's re-election is even more important
than the well-being and dignity of one's own child.

So we are told by the Big Progressive Kahuna himself, Markos Moulitsas. In a recent, super-savyy analysis of
the Obama Administration's manifest failures to promote its image
properly and thus secure the president's re-election, Moulitsas produces
this remarkable passage:

Bottom line, if Obama's approach to
governing was proving popular, then there'd be little fault. If
triangulating against liberals bolstered his numbers with independents,
then that'd be cool! Heck, if slapping my first-born in the face bumped
his numbers up with independents, I'd tolerate it. But it's not. His
current approach isn't working.

"If slapping my first-born in the face bumped his numbers up with independents, I'd tolerate it."
I realize this is offered as a deliberately over-the-top rhetorical
flourish (perhaps even as a cack-handed, piles-producing strain toward
humor), but it bespeaks a partisan obsequiousness -- and a moral
blindness -- that staggers the mind. After all, Obama has actually been killing,
not just slapping, first-borns (and other children) at a steady clip
for more than two years now. And this certainly hasn't hurt "his
numbers" with serious, savvy progressives like Kos.

It is just possible, of course, that these on-going atrocities have
in themselves kept Obama from "bumping his numbers up with
independents," some of whom might object to seeing mass murder committed
by their government. But this is not a factor in our progressives'
earnest cogitations. No, it's all about the process, the PR framing,
finding the "popular approach" and "not looking weak."

These vast outpourings of innocent blood literally do not matter
to our serious, savvy progressives. The only thing that really matters
is Obama's re-election, his chance to continue grinding up bones and
bodies with his beloved War Machine and his runaway Security Organs for
another four years.

This is what it's come to: "Take my child,
slap her in the face, if it will help you keep on killing." This is all
that's left of the "professional left."

Chris Floyd is an American journalist. His work has appeared in print and online in venues all over the world, including The Nation, Counterpunch, Columbia Journalism Review, the Christian Science Monitor, Il Manifesto, the Moscow Times and many (more...)